Why Are Individualized Programs More
Successful in Industry and the Military?
SIGMUND TOBIAS
Variables in the
success of
individualized
instruction include
rewards students
receive, student
maturity and
motivation, and the
amount of time spent
on task.
R
esearch shows that individualized instruction is effective in military, industrial, and medical contexts, but that it often leads to lower achieve ment in elementary and secondary schools (see Orlansky and String, 1979; Weiner, 1980; Brophy, 1979, 1981; Rosenshine, 1979) Two panels of re searchers recently discussed this para dox, attempting to analyze differences in applications, procedures, and re search findings.'Variability of Applications
While both panels pointed out the wide variety in procedures labeled individu alized instruction, it was generally agreed that the term should apply to practices in which students proceed through instructional sequences at their own rates.
In military and industrial contexts materials are prepared according to an instructional system development (ISD) model. Such models involve careful analysis of the content to be taught, fol lowed by specific, often behavioral, descriptions of activities the learner will be capable of when instruction is com plete. The final or terminal objective is analyzed so that all its prerequisites are specified. In turn, requirements for lower level objectives are explicitly stated once those at higher levels have been specified. The objectives are then arranged in a hierarchy, and instruc tional materials developed to enable the learner to master each of the objectives.
In an ISD model, the lowest level in the hierarchy that a student can accom plish prior to instruction is determined. Students then enter the sequence at this level and proceed until all prerequisites of the terminal objective have been mas tered The final objective is then mas tered in turn. Typically, students are assessed regarding mastery of an
objec-Sigmund Tobias is Professor of Education, City College, City University of New York.
tive immediately after completing the material. Those who master objectives are routed to a succeeding segment. Stu dents who fail to demonstrate mastery are looped back to repeat part or all of the preceding instructional sequence.
In elementary schools, the same de tailed analysis of the objectives and se quence of instruction is also often evi dent in individualized instructional materials. For example. Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI) (Wang. 1980) and the DISTAR (Becker and oth ers, 1981) materials follow such a model. On the other hand, many indi vidualized materials used in schools have not gone through this elaborate and costly development model.
Therefore, research reporting results of individualized instruction should be specific regarding the activities per formed by students and the procedures followed in developing and implement ing the instructional sequence.
Institutional Contexts and Rewards
The contexts in which individualized instruction occurs vary greatly. In mili tary and industrial training sites trainees are paid while receiving instruction It is important to conduct the training as rap idly as possible so that trainees can re sume their assigned responsibilities or assume new ones.
In elementary and secondary schools, on the other hand, reducing student learning time is relatively less important because students are not paid for the time taken to achieve mastery.
The payoff for completing instruction is also different. Students in industry and the military are frequently rewarded for accomplishing their objectives by ?ssignment to more important responsi bilities for which they typic lly receive higher pay and more pi stige. In schools, however, students who com plete an instructional unit are simply assigned additional work. Andersen (1981) found that students invariably indicated that the major motivation for
"Students in industry
and military are fre
quently rewarded for
accomplishing their
objectives by assign
ment to more impor
tant responsibilities. .
"It is not clear, how
ever, if elementary and
secondary students
are mature enough to
spend the required
time-on-task. . . ."
studying a sequence was in order to complete it, and presumably to turn to more rewarding activities One can as sume, then, that industrial and military students are more eager to complete courses than students in schools.
Medical schools have a variety of fea tures not present in either schools or military/industrial contexts. The costs of medical training are enormous. De velopment of effective instructional methods that reduce these costs some what is, therefore, a much sought-after goal.
Also, in medical, industrial, and mili tary settings it is easier to develop simu lations which add realism and excite
ment to individualized programs. In medical simulations, for example, (Weiner, 1980), material describing the patient's complaints is presented to stu dents who then "order" medical tests ranging from X-rays to blood counts, urine analysis, and the like. The com puter responds almost immediately with the results and asks the student to offer a tentative diagnosis. Following the diag nosis the student develops a treatment plan involving medication, diet, exer cises, and so on. The student is then in formed of the positive or negative out come of the treatment plan. Students can, in one hour, simulate what they would otherwise leam from a case over a period of days, weeks, or even years.
In a military context, it is possible to simulate by computer the propulsion system of a ship or submarine. Naval lieutenants can leam how a ship moves through water much as they would leam aboard ship, but without the harmful effects or costly expenses that would be caused by real-life mistakes
It is harder to develop comparable simulations in elementary and second ary schools because a thorough-going knowledge of all elements is not availa ble. That is, a series of if-then proposi tions are needed so the outcomes of a particular student action can be repre sented by the instructional sequence. Few areas of knowledge, other than mathematics and science, are substan tial enough for that.
Still, more topics could probably be taught by simulation than presently are the law of supply and demand, for example. Given information about the availability and cost of oil, gold, coffee, and other products, students could ex perience the effects of changes in supply and demand on prices Such simulations would add liveliness to individuali/ed instruction and would probably improve student motivation.
Time-on-Task
Research relating teacher behavior to student achievement indicates that, as might be expected, a major variable accounting for student achievement is time spent on instructional tasks (Brophy, 1979. 1981; Rosenshine, 1979). Elementary and secondary teach ers who have a business-like managerial style succeed in having their students spend more time-on-task and, in turn, their students tend to achieve more.
In individualized instruction students are, to a greater degree than in teacher- directed learning, left to their own
vices. It is not clear, however, if ele mentary and secondary students are mature enough to spend the required time-on-task to accomplish instructional objectives. It is. therefore, not surpris ing that research relating teacher behav ior to student achievement indicates that teacher-monitored instruction is associ ated with student achievement. When teachers monitor students' studying, whether in seat work or other activities, students are unlikely to engage in much task irrelevant behavior.
Research also indicates that students spend less time on a task when many options arc available compared to a task with more limited options (Jackson. 1968; Rosenshine. 1979). Since indi vidualized instruction provides students with more choices, this is yet another reason why students in individualized contexts may spend less timc-on-task than their adult counterparts.
Other Variables
Several other variables that may help clarify the research findings were identi fied in the roundtable discussions re ferred to earlier.
Student preference anil attitudes. In most contexts students do not have a choice of the type of instruction. Whether schools have adopted individu alized instruction or a teacher-based method, all students in the class are usu ally expected to learn in the same way. Weiner (1980) indicated that in the indi vidualized CAI materials developed at the Downstate Medical Center in New York, medical students were given op tions regarding the strategics they pre ferred. Among the available methods were CAI. textbooks, videotapes, and a number of others Over an eight year period, only one-quarter of the students opted for instruction via individualized CAI.
This experience raises interesting questions. If individualized instruction were assigned only to students who pre ferred that mode, would their achieve ment be higher'.' The available data sug gest not For example. Tobias (1972) conducted two studies in which students were given a choice of instructional methods. The first study used alternate CAI strategies and the second used dif ferent programmed instruction formats. There was little difference in achieve ment between students who chose their method of instruction and those ran domly assigned to a strategy. Snow also (1980) reports that there is little research supporting the notion that students will
Does Individualization Work in Elementary and Secondary Schools?
The question. "Does individualiza- tion work?" is far too broad and complex to address, the answer inev itably is yes and no. What do we mean by individualization? What do we mean by working? Only as we narrow the questions can we hope to achieve some reasonable answers.
Does this mean there is nothing we can conclude about individualiza tion? Not at all. The research and experience with individualization over the past decade and more has a great deal to tell us.
1. Does individualization change
classrooms 7 Yes. an almost univer sal finding is that when individuali zation is well implemented, the schools are different The environ ment does become more sensitive to individual differences of students, and both staff and students generally are more satisfied. But this happens only when individualization is truly tried; simply adopting a label, or a new schedule, or some different ma terials, won't necessarily change anything
2 Is individualized instruction a
great deal of effort 7 It can be. and often is frankly, more than some staff members are willing to put forth We know a number of in stances in which staff members have been "burned out" attempting to practice individualization. The prob lem is greater when a whole school attempts to individualize, or when a number of subject areas are individu alized at once. But even the simpler approaches, such as organizing in struction by objectives for a single class or subject matter, call for addi tional effort.
3 Does individualization in
crease the amount of record-keeping needed? Inevitably, individualiza tion requires knowing more about the students, regardless of the system employed. Lack of individualization never was due to disinterest on the
Reprinted from Approaches to Individual-
i:ed Instruction. Jan Jeter. editor Alexan dria. Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 1980. pp. 63 64.
part of teachers; they simply didn't have the time to follow every stu dent, or the materials and procedures to collect the information any other way. But having the potential for gathering more information requires more recording and interpreting if it is to be used. And no completely sat isfactory solution has yet been de vised for addressing this problem. Perhaps in the future the computer will be able to do much of this, but as yet. we have only partial solutions. 4. Do students achieve more
under individualized instruction?
This is a very difficult question to answer as it must be related to what actually occurs in the classroom and how we go about measuring achieve ment. Certainly there have been many examples of achievement gain when what is tested reasonably re flects what has been instructed; for more generalized measures, the re sults have been less positive.
One conclusion seems quite cer tain, however. There have been very few instances in which students in individualized classes have done less well than those receiving traditional instruction. The finding of "no dif ference" is often interpreted in a negative manner, but this isn't neces sarily true. There are many potential benefits from individualization: the staff may be happier in their jobs, or students may be more positive about their educational experiences. These are worthwhile outcomes, and the evaluations argue that these can be obtained without sacrificing achieve ment
CONRAD G. KATZENMEYER
Associate Dean Research and Sponsored Programs Western Michigan University Kalamaioo. Michigan
—LINDA J. INGISON
Director Center for Educational Research and Policy Studies State University of New York
Alban\
learn more when they choose their in structional methods. It should be noted that many of the investigations of stu dent preference were conducted in re search settings, and those in classroom situations tended to be of very brief du ration. Results might be different over a longer period of time.
Student level. Another variable of importance in assessing the effective ness of individualization is the skill level of the student. Most individual ized instructional materials require stu dents to read both instructions and the content to be learned Individualized systems using audio and videotapes tend to be the exception.
In view of this reliance on reading it is not surprising that many research studies suggest that elementary and jun ior high school students learn more from traditional instruction, which probably relies less on the written page than does individualized instruction. When stu dents have difficulty reading directions for the use of learning materials, they obviously will not leam a great deal from them. It remains for further re search to clarify whether individualized instruction in school contexts is more effective for students who have solid mastery of the basic skills than those lacking such competence
Instructional Adaptation. Much of what passes for individualized instruc tion at present enables students to com plete instruction at a variable rate. In truly individualized instruction, the method of instruction would be suited to student characteristics in addition to the rate. Such individualization of method requires a data base of well replicated interactions between student individual difference characteristics on the one hand and instructional methods on the other (Tobias, 198la). For example, one might reason that students who suffer from high anxiety while engaged in learning activities should be instructed by different methods than their low anx iety colleagues. Such conjecture can become a scientifically-based prediction only if research consistently demon strates a statistical interaction between anxiety and different instructional meth ods. Unfortunately, the research litera ture shows few such relationships deal ing with anxiety (Tobias, 1979) or other individual differences (Tobias, 198lb; Snow, 1977; Cronbach and Snow,
1977).
More Successful Programs
Many variables account for differences
in research results dealing with individ ualized instruction in school settings and in military, industrial, and medical contexts.
Administrators determined to im prove individualization in elementary and secondary schools should be aware that effectiveness seems to depend somewhat on adequacy of design of the instructional materials, provisions for student motivation, liveliness with which the content is presented which might include more use of simulation, the skill level of participants, and other relevant student characteristics. Atten tion to these factors, plus additional re
in truly individualized
instruction, the method
of instruction would be
suited to student c
har
acteristics i
n addition to
the rate."
search clarifying some of these varia bles, may lead to more successful individualized programs.
Preparation of this paper was partially supported by the Institute for Research and Development in Occupational Education, Center for the Advanced Study in Educa tion, City University of New York. Requests for reprints should be addressed to the Insti tute at 33 W. 42nd St.. New York. NY 10036.
'"Individualized Instruction." Roundta- ble discussion held at the annual meeting of the Northeastern Educational Research As sociation. Ellenville, N.Y., October 1980. Participants were Jere Brophy; Fred McDonald; Harold F. O'Niel. Jr.; Sigmund Tobias, Chair; and Max Weiner. "Contra dictory Research Results on Individualized Instruction." Roundtable discussion held at the annual meeting of the American Educa tional Research Association, Los Angeles. April 1981. Participants were; William W. Cooley; Barak Rosenshine; Jerry Short; Sig mund Tobias. Chair; Max Weiner; and Wal lace Wulfeck.
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Jackson, P. W. Life in Classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1968.
Orlansky, J., and String, J Cost-Effec
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